So… A lot… Enjoyable! | DodgeStorage

The unmistakable roar of a supercharged HEMI^® engine echoes throughout the infield street course at Texas Motor Speedway. Heavy smoke flows from the rear tires of an SRT^® Hellcat Redeye Charger because it transitions easily from one nook to the subsequent, its widebody stance and 800+ horsepower working in good concord. Behind the wheel sits Adam Comeaux, an Army veteran from Tennessee who’s found that the actual thrill of proudly owning an SRT Hellcat isn’t simply the straight-line velocity – it’s studying to maintain all that energy beneath you whilst you’re sideways and smiling.

Adam turned the keys over for charity thrill rides and I’m about to expertise the infield street course looking the facet home windows for the primary time. “You can feel the momentum,” Jamal Dieb, my pilot for in the present day’s sideways exercise, says, nonetheless grinning after a session on the drift course. “When it transitions from left to right, it’s a lot of mass. But man, when you get it right, when you actually link everything together, it’s just pure joy.” Sidenote: Jamal is the actual deal. The man can WHEEL!!!

This is Comeaux’s third drift occasion, and he’s come a good distance from his first tentative slides finally yr’s Mopar_® Heaven. That preliminary expertise was equal components terrifying and addictive – the second when he realized his SRT Hellcat was able to a lot greater than he’d imagined. Today, with skilled drift instructors from Urban Racing guiding individuals, he’s a part of a rising motion of Mopar homeowners discovering the sideways life.

Comeaux’s journey to turning into a drift fanatic wasn’t precisely standard. He didn’t develop up in a automobile household, however he caught the bug early with a 2008 WRX STI in highschool. A buddy’s father, a lawyer who all the time drove the most recent and best Mopar car, launched him to the world of American V8s. In 2008, that meant an introduction to muscle automobile goodness within the passenger seat of an SRT8, and Comeaux was hooked.

“V8s, you know, this is it,” he recollects of these early rides. “It’s pretty cool.”

His first Mopar car got here in 2019 after coming back from deployment in Iraq – a 2018 Daytona R/T that he used for Turo leases. That automobile would inadvertently set him on the trail to his present SRT Hellcat after it was stolen. When his insurance coverage firm provided to make issues proper, Comeaux didn’t hesitate: “I’ll go order a Hellcat, I guess.”

But proudly owning an SRT Hellcat introduced new challenges. When his Redeye Charger widebody was stolen at a Mopar occasion in Dallas in 2021, it sparked one thing sudden – not simply frustration, however innovation. Together with Eric Bankston of Destroyer 1320, Comeaux helped develop theft deterrent merchandise for contemporary Mopar automobiles. Today, they’ve protected roughly 25,500 Mopar automobiles with their options, however Comeaux is fast to pivot the dialog again to what actually lights him up: driving.

Drag racing was the pure first step – Comeaux steadily visited Bowling Green and Beach Bend close to his Nashville dwelling. But there’s solely a lot a quarter-mile can educate you a couple of automobile’s capabilities. The street course on the National Corvette Museum beckoned, and ultimately, so did drifting.

“It was like, okay, obviously drag race, right?” Comeaux explains. “But I’d had the Hellcats for a few years. I needed something more.”

Last yr’s Mopar Heaven offered the revelation. Comeaux signed up for an instructor-led drift session with Urban Racing, bringing his personal SRT Hellcat loaded down with spare tires and gear – so loaded, actually, that on the drive again to the lodge one night time, Fort Worth police mistook him for a road racer.

“The sergeant comes up and goes, ‘Did you win?’” Comeaux laughs. “And I was like, ‘Well, I was drifting today, so I don’t really know how to win. We didn’t crash. We had fun. I guess that is winning.”

The officer requested about racing a Supra, however Comeaux’s earnest confusion was real. “Sir, I honestly don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I have my dinner on the passenger seat. I have a thousand pounds of gear. I have bald tires on the back from drifting all day. There is no way I could have raced whoever you’re saying.” They let him go, fallacious SRT Hellcat solely.

The first drift day was humbling. Comeaux went from whole noob to studying to deal with every nook individually. But linking corners collectively? That proved far tougher than he anticipated. “It’s the linking corners together that is my next step,” he admits. “I can link two corners together. Three is very hard.”

A breakthrough got here when he swallowed his satisfaction and handed the keys to Jamal, one in every of Urban Racing’s instructors. “I was able to get one corner, and then I just couldn’t get the transition right,” Comeaux recollects. “I was like, dude, please just show me. He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ‘I’m just gonna be doing this all day, so I need you to show me how to link it.’”

Jamal’s response was modest: “Don’t judge me too hard. I’ve never driven a Hellcat before.” Of course, he then seamlessly linked each nook, narrating his inputs as he went – when he was on the throttle, when he was braking, and the way he was manipulating weight switch along with his toes and fingers.

“That’s the thing I couldn’t see, you know,” Comeaux says. “I can hear he’s not on the throttle, but is he braking, or is he just letting it go? And if he’s braking, how much? The pressure, the weight transfer, where you come off the brake pedal – do you come off smooth? Do you snap off? That’s where it clicks.” Drifting is a recreation of really feel. It takes a ton of seat time to know precisely what inputs the automobile needs to maintain issues sideways and smoke rolling off the tires from nook to nook.

The automobile itself has advanced alongside Comeaux’s abilities. Last yr, only a week earlier than Mopar Heaven, he had Franklin Chrysler Dodge Jeep_® Ram set up the Direct Connection Stage 2 equipment, bumping energy to 837 horsepower on pump fuel with a 100-octane tune out there on the push of a button. The equipment’s transmission tuning proved particularly invaluable for getting and staying sideways. “The transmission has been snappier,” Comeaux notes. “It just knows where to be.”

Tire choice turned an artwork kind. For these occasions, Comeaux hunts Facebook Marketplace for half-price takeoffs – 500-treadwear all-seasons are magical for getting the automobile to step out and keep out. They’re good for drifting: the correct treadwear to be smoky, they final greater than a lap, they usually sometimes don’t delaminate with a bang.

“A lot of people will say if you’re going to be drifting the car, use these,” he explains. “I drifted the entire day last year on a set of not-new Pirellis, then drove 700 miles back to Tennessee on the same tires.”

The subsequent evolution entails coilovers to resolve recurring adaptive damping codes, an angle equipment and a hydraulic handbrake. “We’re hoping AAD is going to come out with their angle kit,” Comeaux says. (AAD has launched this equipment, and it’s EPIC.) “Maybe next year we can go do the entire big course at Texas Motor Speedway. That would be the goal.”

Comeaux has discovered a welcoming neighborhood in drifting and high-performance driving occasions. At this yr’s Mopar Heaven, he and the Urban Racing staff have given over 100 ride-alongs, placing folks within the passenger seat to expertise what a correctly pushed SRT Hellcat can do.

“I definitely like the instructor-led events,” Comeaux displays. “I didn’t really know there was so much support and Community behind drifting. I don’t want to just bash my head into a wall. I want to learn.”

He’s already eyeing extra alternatives, together with Chin Track Days at Barber Motorsports Park and the rising drift scene at Mid Pond close to Birmingham. The objective isn’t to change into knowledgeable drifter – it’s easier than that.

“These cars were built to put smiles on your face,” Comeaux says. “It’s cool to get my car used the way it was kind of intended. The SRT design team would be pleased.”

As smoke continues to pour from the SRT Hellcat’s rear tires and Jamal takes one other group of wide-eyed fans on the experience of their lives, Comeaux watches with satisfaction. He’s discovered his groove within the pure, unfiltered pleasure of holding 4,400 kilos of American muscle dancing sideways. And he’s serving to others uncover that very same pleasure, one smoky lap at a time.

Sometimes, the easiest way ahead is sideways!